No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

"Impressions from a ballroom, New Year's Eve in St. Cloud" also known as "The St. Cloud Manifesto" (1889)

When seen as a whole, art derives from a person’s desire to communicate himself to another. I do not believe in an art which is not forced into existence by a human being’s desire to open his heart. All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart’s blood. Art is your heart’s blood.

Manuscript (1891), quoted in Edvard Munch and the Physiology of Symbolism (2002) by Shelley Wood Cordulack

I was walking along a path with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red — I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence — there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city — my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

On the experience which inspired his famous painting, The Scream (Shrik, originally titled Der Schrei der Natur [The Cry of Nature]), in an entry in his Diary (22 January 1892).

Could only have been painted by a madman.

His inscription, written in pencil, between the red clouds on at least one of his paintings of The Scream (c. 1893 - 1910), as quoted in Edvard Munch : The Man and His Art (1977) by Ragna Thiis Stang, p. 106

My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? … my art gives meaning to my life.